Spirit of the Season
by nathan-p
Summary: Despite what you might think, even the School has holidays. Starting with Thanksgiving, let's see how they celebrate. Jeb/Roland, Reilly/OC. RC-verse. Now with Christmas, too.
1. Thanksgiving

Holidays, in an institution, are really nothing special. Life goes on. The cafeteria has a go at cooking something vaguely related to the holiday in question -- in this case, given that it was Thanksgiving, dry slices of turkey with anemic gravy, mashed potatoes from a box, rolls that were making an honest effort at decency, and cranberry sauce still somewhat shaped like the can.

And there's always one person semi-dedicated to keeping the holiday spirit alive.

In this case, given that it was the School and no one was really too hot on remembering when the hell it was the holidays anyway, said person was Kyle. Who was among the most normal people working _at_ the School, incidentally, if we're excepting people like the secretaries and janitors.

"Happy Thanksgiving," he said to Reilly that morning.

"Fuck off," Reilly replied civilly, and pulled the covers over his face.

Kyle yanked them back down. "C'mon, can't you be nice?"

"It's too early to be nice. Didn't I just tell you to fuck off?"

"Yeah, you did." Kyle sat on the edge of the bed. "That's not very nice. But in the spirit of Thanksgiving --"

"I'll smother you with a pillow if you don't shut the fuck up." Reilly squeezed his eyes shut, apparently still determined to attempt and sleep. "Now get the fuck out of my room."

"Why? It's seven o' clock. You should be up by now. No reason to stay in bed all day." OK, so maybe he was overdoing the cheer a little bit. Maybe.

"I was up until two last night. You hear me? Two in the morning. I got four hours of sleep. Fuck off." He put an arm over his eyes.

"Oh, come on. I can bring you coffee or something." Kyle sighed, and stopped resisting his temptation to elbow Reilly in the ribs.

In response, Reilly made a highly undignified, high-pitched sound, somewhat resembling a squeal. "_Fuck_ you!"

"Be nice or I'll do it again," Kyle said warningly.

"You _wouldn't_." Reilly clamped his arms to his sides, which meant he had to uncover his eyes. He looked rather goofy, in an adorable way.

Oh God, had Kyle just applied the word "adorable" to someone? Fuck fuck _fuck_!

"Oh, I will." He made his best attempt at a menacing, evil laugh, but suspected that he only made it halfway. "I will."

"When Hell freezes over you will. Now get the fuck out." He would've sounded a lot more impressive had he not been lying in bed with his eyes closed.

"C'mon. Up. I don't _care_ how many hours of sleep you did or didn't get last night, you're going to get out of bed on Thanksgiving."

Reilly pried one eye open. "Disregarding that you're not the boss of me... what the fuck is it with you and Thanksgiving? I actually have today off, fuckface. It's my business if I want to stay in bed all day."

Kyle for once chose not to go with an immature retort -- it might have been the slightest bit inappropriate to say 'well, staying in bed by yourself would be no fun at all -- maybe I could join you?' and dude, fuck that. "Just get up. I don't have to give you _reasons_."

Reilly whacked him with the pillow.

"Oh, that's not cool," Kyle muttered gravely, and flopped down across Reilly's stomach. "You're gonna get the fuck out of bed or I'm just gonna stay here."

"That is," Reilly said, "the shittiest plan I've ever heard, and I've heard some really terrible plans."

"Oh yeah?" Admittedly, it wasn't much of a plan. He could work with keeping Reilly in bed, though. "Do tell."

Reilly laid one arm across Kyle's chest. "Well... there was one time involving Dr. Harrison, a whole mess of surgical tubing and three really pissed-off Erasers..."

* * *

Meanwhile, elsewhere, in a land with much less swearing and a lot more fluffy lovey-dovey action -- which is to say, down the hall in Doctor Batchelder's room...

A knock on the door. "You awake?"

"No." Ter Borcht pulled the pillow over his face. Some people like being up and awake in the morning. Some don't.

You get three guesses as to which type Doctor ter Borcht was, and the first two don't count.

"I brought you breakfast?" One thing about Jeb: he knows fuckall about how people and their emotions work. One other thing: he knows what makes Roland tick, what he likes, what he doesn't like.

He took the pillow off his face. It wasn't obscenely early. Well, not quite. By his standards up until recently, it was right around when he should be up and in the lab. Considering that he was across the globe from said lab and, oh yeah, pregnant -- forget getting up at six. Unless it was for Jeb -- for Jeb he'd make an exception. "Fine."

How did Jeb know him so well? Normally he seemed almost willfully clueless about... people in general. When it came to Roland, though -- it seemed like he just _knew_ things.

Like the fact that he could be bribed into semi-civility in the early morning with an offer of food and companionship and not having to be stared at in the cafeteria.

Jeb came in and set a plate down on the desk. "You feeling OK?"

"Yes." He sat up, not quite willing to get out of bed yet. Jeb made it worth being awake in the morning, but... getting out of bed would be pushing it. Maybe in half an hour. "Come over here."

Jeb sat down on the edge of the bed, and Roland wrapped his arms around him. "Thanks," he muttered.

"For bringing you breakfast?" He sounded at least a little surprised. Brilliant scientist or no brilliant scientist, sometimes the great Doctor Batchelder was nothing if not adorable.

"For everything." Damn. He smelled good -- as if ter Borcht didn't have enough reasons to want to keep the man around.

"You're welcome." He sighed. "I have today off. Anything you want to do?"

_You_.

"Not unless there's something you want to do."

"You have something in mind?"

"Possibly."

Ter Borcht gave in and yanked him down onto the bed.

Breakfast remained forgotten for a while.

* * *

"So remind me why you hate Thanksgiving."

Reilly resisted the urge to poke Kyle in the ribs. Revenge right now would be _so_ satisfying... but as the Klingons said, revenge was a dish best served cold.

"Dunno. Never really liked my family; yours was more fun." It was hard to talk with Kyle lying on his stomach, and Kyle didn't seem to have figured that out. Why was his best friend such an idiot?

"That was a _fiasco_." It only took one minor disaster for Kyle's family to discover that as friendly as their son's best friend could be, he was deeply bad juju when it came to family gatherings. That, and he hadn't told _his_ family where he was intending to spend Thanksgiving.

They made him pay for his own Greyhound ticket back home. Reilly had never really gotten over the experience -- dammit, he'd been saving that money for the convention next year, their last before Reilly went off to college.

"OK," Reilly concedes. "Fiasco or no fiasco, your family was way awesomer than mine. I never did get your mom's recipe for those cookies." One thing quite a few people never suspected about Reilly: he kind of liked baking.

Kyle snorted. Reilly had one _strange_ definition of 'awesome'. "Awesome? I doubt it. We're a bunch of crazy Southerners. You're lucky my uncles didn't try and induct you into our family by making you my blood brother."

"We're already blood brothers, fuckface. Want me to show you our scars?"

_Stop perving on me._ "No. If you want, I can ask her for the recipe next time I see her. Warning, it involves violence." It was looking like he'd have to actually see his family in person sometime soon. They'd been fine with phone calls, but... Mom was _so_ bad at giving instructions over the phone.

"Sounds like my kind of recipe," Reilly said brightly.

"It would be." He sighed. "Then again, you've never seen my mom bake. Bring your safety glasses. Your shots are up to date, right?"

"Duh!" Reilly sounded thrilled. He had no idea what he was getting himself into. "So it's set. Next year we're going to your house for Thanksgiving?"

"Sure. Now remind me why you hate the holiday?"

"I do _not_ hate Thanksgiving." If he weren't so good in bed -- and funny -- and nerdy -- and OK so Kyle had lots of reasons to stay with the bastard, whether or not he lacked the ability to be consistent.

"You just said you did."

He sighed, and if he hadn't had his eyes closed, probably would've rolled them. "I never had much to be thankful for, I guess. My family sucked, I was too smart for my own good, and I turned out gayer than a three-dollar bill."

Kyle poked him in the ribs. He had it coming. "Well, come on. There must be something."

"OK. Fine. Lemme think."

Kyle was silent for a moment.

"You, I guess."

Kyle tried not to laugh. Reilly opened his eyes.

"Do _not_ laugh. I'm deadly serious."

"OK, OK... if you say so." Well, if nothing else... entry number four on his list of things he'd _thought_ only happened in fanfic.

"Your family is more awesome than mine. Mine's fuckin' boring, yours is at least weird." He spoke as if he were reciting a list. "You kept me from losing my mind in college. And -- you're not bad-looking, either."

Kyle grinned. "Aww, thanks, darling."

Reilly made a growling noise. "If you call me 'darling' ever again, I swear to God I'll rip your intestines out and choke you with them."

"You're so sweet."

"_Fuck you_!"

* * *

There's nothing spending time with the ones who love you most.

(Yes, Reilly. Even if they piss you off.)

Happy holidays.


	2. Christmas

"Why didn't you call? It took me forever to get this number."

Ter Borcht sighed, summoning up as much patience as he could. "That's because you're not supposed to have it. No one is."

"I'm your big sister. I want to call you, I'll call you."

"Fine."

Jeb offered Roland a chair, and he sat down gratefully. Knowing her, he'd be on the phone for a long time -- they might be dissimilar in most ways, but both of them were persistent when they wanted to be.

"So... how've you been?" God help him for noticing, but somehow, she managed to sound like Reilly might if he spoke German -- the same flippant intonation. How the hell did she do it?

"Fine. I'd tell you more, but..."

She sighed, and the connection waved for a moment before stabilizing. "You, sir, are a tease," she informed him.

"Minna, you're the one Mother threatened to disown because she went through ten boyfriends in a week."

(Jeb wasn't _trying_ to eavesdrop, but that was one story he _had_ to hear at some point. He made a note to himself to ask, although it was going to be awkward explaining that he understood more spoken German than he let on.)

She giggled. "You always were her favorite. Why don't you call her, too? She misses you."

"_You_ called _me_. Besides. I'm busy." This was a flat-out lie. It's just that his mother had always known him best, and if he talked to her eventually she'd ask what was making him so close-mouthed, and he wouldn't be able to keep the truth from her.

As Reilly would say, she'd _freak_.

"Not so busy that you can't talk to me." Well. That was because he was too polite to hang up on anyone instantly, much less his beloved older sister. (If beloved was the appropriate word.) "She's your mother and it's Christmas Eve, isn't it?"

"Yes," he said grudgingly. "Minna, how late is it there?"

"Late enough to make hearing my dear little brother's voice worth it." Hearing that tone of voice again, he wasn't quite sure if he wanted to see her again or if he didn't.

He made a fair go at computing the timezone math in his head, and only came up with it being a fairly decent time in California, but rather late in Germany. Typical. "I'm not going to call Mother right now. Get used to it."

"She wants to talk to you -- she's your closest living relative, and apparently she had an interesting conversation with your work partner a while ago."

(It was a marker of the obviousness of innuendo when even Jeb could pick up on it. He made a fair go at not looking shocked -- it didn't matter, given that Roland wasn't even looking.)

"Interesting... conversation?" He tried to remember a prayer for help, could only come up with the Litany Against Fear. Damn.

"She wouldn't tell me." He could hear the suppressed laughter in her voice -- one thing about Minna, she loved torturing him like this. _I know something you don't know._

"You're just trying to get me to call her."

"Well... yes."

He sighed, switched the phone to his other ear. (Jeb shot him a sympathetic glance.) "Minna. It's Christmas Eve, and I have... other things to be doing. You might be single, but I'm not." It was as close as he could get to flat-out telling her 'Can't talk, spending Christmas Eve with my lover'. He'd been raised to be polite, after all.

"Aww, how sweet." It was obvious to him from her voice that she was trying not to ask _is he sweet? what's his name?_ or the million other questions she'd always asked when her little brother got into a relationship with someone. "In that case -- just call as soon as you can, all right? I know you have her number, don't lie. Go have fun."

"Goodbye," he managed to squeeze in before she hung up on him. That was decidedly odd -- normally she'd have made Jeb come to the phone and say hello, or quizzed him about what Jeb was like.

Instead, she'd been... something like considerate.

Strange.

He hung up the phone.

That, and if she'd been implying what he thought she'd been implying... he was in trouble. How much did his mother know? He could count on her to keep his secret, but... dear God, he was going to have to _talk_ to her about this.

He hadn't planned on that.

He probably should have.

"What's wrong?" Jeb asked. (_You're pale._ He didn't want to freak Roland out, though. That wouldn't do.)

No use trying to hide it. "My mother... probably knows that I'm pregnant." He winced. Oh, that was never going to get any easier to say. _Way to stay professional._

Jeb looked surprised. "How? I thought that... almost no one did." Yeah. Almost. He just wasn't cut out for keeping anything top-secret.

"She's my next of kin." He stared at his hands. Not making eye contact made this easier, somehow. "Marian must have told her."

He raised one eyebrow -- one thing that always, _always_ struck ter Borcht about him was that economy of expression. Jeb was never more emotional than necessary.

Now, if only ter Borcht could figure out what the hell that meant, he'd be in business.

"Well," Jeb said delicately, "I'm sure she'd be proud of you."

He laughed. "Really? _Why_?"

"What mother wouldn't be proud of a son like you?"

If ter Borcht had ever doubted that he loved Jeb... well, that doubt was gone. Someone who could say that and mean it was definitely a keeper.

He made his best attempt at a straight-faced answer. "Possibly mine. You have to remember, when she grew up men were the ones who got women pregnant."

Even Jeb couldn't hold a poker face for long. He grinned. "True. But you're brave, obviously. And you're kind. And compared to your sister, very well-behaved."

Ter Borcht laughed. "Oh. Ten boyfriends in a week? Remind me to tell you that story sometime."

"You have to. Or I'll call her and ask."

Definitely, _definitely_ a keeper.

"You wouldn't."

At some point Jeb had come over to stand behind him, and now he put his arms around ter Borcht's shoulders. "You," he said with a hint of a smile in his voice, "underestimate me."

"Never." He leaned back against Jeb. "Minna said that I should be the one to call my mother -- she won't call me."

"Good." His voice was soft in ter Borcht's ear. "Even your mother doesn't get to interrupt our first Christmas together."

Well, it wasn't _technically_ their first Christmas together -- it was still Christmas Eve, just like it had been at the party all those years ago.

That was just a matter of semantics, though.

And to put it concisely: fuck that.

"Damn right she doesn't." Ter Borcht let Jeb pull him a little closer. "Have anything you need to do?"

"You _are_ my job right now," Jeb reminded him. Which was true. He'd finagled it so that ter Borcht's experiment was his main priority for now. He still had other projects going on, but Roland's was the most important. "That, and it's Christmas Eve. I think it's all right if we don't do anything work-like for a while."

Ter Borcht sighed and closed his eyes. There was something soothing about Jeb's voice. "So not even family interrupts your time with me?" God, he was tired. Suddenly, just curling up in bed with a book (or Jeb -- he wasn't picky) seemed like a good idea, though sleep sounded like the best option.

"You _are_ my family." He made a small, contented noise into ter Borcht's ear -- not quite a sigh, but something like it. _I've got you now._ Whatever plans Jeb might have had -- other than "relaxing with my family" -- were shot.

Call it a special talent.

"Oh, not really." Ter Borcht had never been very close to his family, but... not to have one? That just seemed sad.

"Well... I have a brother. And some cousins, aunts, uncles, that kind of thing. Haven't seem them in years, though," he said reflectively. "We don't talk a whole lot, anyway."

"You have a brother? What's his name?" Sharing small things like this with Jeb... it seemed silly, but it meant a lot to him. Maybe more than it should.

"Steven. We call him Steve." He laughed. "The last time I saw him... well, he almost made it to my college graduation, but it turned out he had to go to court."

Well. Jeb needed to hear the story of Minna's week of ten boyfriends, and ter Borcht had to hear the story of Steve in court. Quid pro quo, if his Latin wasn't failing him. "I have to hear that one."

"If you'll tell me how your sister managed to go through ten boyfriends in a week." Well, that was that, then -- it _was_ going to be quid pro quo.

He'd just have to resist calling Jeb Clarice.

He stifled a smile, leaned back against Jeb's chest, hoped he'd be able to remember all the details. "All right. She was... about eighteen or nineteen at the time. Minna's always been the bad child of the family..."

* * *

"Your family is _insane._"

"Tell me something I don't know," Kyle muttered. "And you haven't even met them yet." He turned off the highway onto a road that would've looked perfectly normal if it weren't surrounded by dark forest on both sides.

Oh, like _that_ wasn't menacing.

"Well, based on what you've told me, and based on _you_... I doubt they're all that sane."

"You don't give us enough credit."

"Maybe not," Kyle said, and put on his turn signal on a stretch of road where there didn't appear to be anything but forest to turn onto.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Kyle slowed down and made the turn -- onto a shady dirt road that was definitely there if you looked for it -- before bothering to answer.

"We're going to my family's Christmas Eve party." He flicked on the headlights. Turned out they needed them. Oh _shit._ Reilly _hated_ driving in dark places. "Also, you've met them before. Stop panicking."

"I was, like, _fourteen_. And they didn't live in fuckin' Silent Hill back then!" Oh, were those _eyes_ he was seeing in between the trees? And where was the sun?

"Chill." Kyle actually _laughed._ "Actually, we're in Buttfuck right now, not Silent Hill."

"It's pronounced 'byoot-fick'," Reilly muttered, looking anywhere but at Kyle, who was smirking. _Oh, you bastard. You're going to hell. Once I strangle you with your own intestines._

"Aww, see, you ain't so scared, are you?" He swerved suddenly, and the rental car bumped onto another road, this one little more than ruts in the dirt. Underbrush swished against the car's undercarriage, and Reilly prayed that the shitbox little Honda could take it. Otherwise they were _fucked_. He was _not_ walking out of here. Wherever here was -- whether it was Buttfuck or Silent Hill -- you couldn't pay him enough to do that.

"I'm just hiding it." Reilly relaxed his hands, flexed the fingers. Keeping a death grip on the sides of the seat really cramped up the hands something fierce.

Besides, if some ghostie came out of the woods with a hankering for human flesh, it would have to go through the car before it got to him -- and by that time, he'd probably be dead of fear, so it was all good.

OK, that wasn't helping.

He saw lights through the trees. "Is that a house?" he asked, mouth getting ahead of his brain before he could remember that yeah, lights usually indicated a house. _Reilly, you perpetual dumbfuck. You're lucky you're fucking a smart dude_ -- except Kyle didn't exactly qualify as "smart" next to some other people Reilly worked with -- _or you'd be up shit creek without a paddle or a canoe._

"Yep. Grandma's expecting us."

_Well, fan-fucking-tastic._ He prayed she wouldn't be waiting with an ax.

Kyle chuckled and parked the car in a wide spot in the road. "She's not that bad. You met her."

Reilly unbuckled his seatbelt with shaking hands. "I was, like, fifteen!"

"She likes you." Kyle locked the car, slipped the keys into his pocket. "You're a good kid, dude."

Reilly trudged behind him as they made their way towards the lights in the trees, now clearly shining from the windows of a comfortable-looking house. There were other cars parked along the side of the road, and when Reilly looked up he could see slivers of blue sky through the trees.

Kyle grinned, laughed a little. "See? You remember now?"

"No." Reilly shoved his hands in his pockets. For the South, it was weirdly chilly. Albeit it _was_ Christmas Eve.

"Well, it'll come back to you sometime." He walked a little faster, feet crunching in the gravel -- was he cold too, or just eager to come home?

Like Reilly would ever ask.

Kyle sprang up the front porch steps and knocked on the door. Reilly stood next to him, feeling unreasonably awkward.

Someone inside opened the door -- a middle-aged woman who looked something like Kyle's mother had the last time Reilly saw her. "Kyle!" she said, looking him up and down. "C'mon in."

"Nice to see you too, Ellen." Kyle stepped over the threshold, and Reilly -- suppressing everything he knew about vampires -- followed him.

The woman at the door -- Ellen -- closed the door behind them and looked at Reilly for a moment, then back to Kyle. "So this is the guest you mentioned?" Compared to Kyle's flat Midwestern voice, she had just a bit of a Southern accent going -- not that Reilly could tell where from. It was just there.

"The very same." Kyle put an arm around Reilly's shoulders.

Reilly ducked away from him and put out his hand to shake Ellen's extended hand. "My name's Reilly. I work with Kyle."

Ellen grinned and let go of his hand. "Aww, you've grown up, haven't you? Last time we met you weren't in college yet."

Reilly blinked, briefly surprised. Oh shit. She knew him from the last time he'd met Kyle's family.

...Why did that have to be a _bad_ thing, though?

He returned her exuberant grin. "It's been a long time."

"Damn right it has." Kyle had vanished somewhere into the house, leaving Reilly alone. Whatever. He dealt with mad scientists on a daily basis, he could damn well deal with Kyle's crazy family. "I'm supposed to tell you Kyle's mom has some recipes for you, and she's waiting in the kitchen."

_Ooh shit. _Those would be those cookie recipes he'd asked for all that time ago, wouldn't they? Karma was a _bitch_. Or whatever. "All right. Thanks."

He moved off towards the kitchen -- if it was where he remembered it being, kind of towards the back of the house on the ground floor -- and stopped for a moment when he heard a loud noise that sounded, to him, an awful lot like a gunshot.

When it was followed by a burst of laughter and loud swearing, Reilly grinned and kept walking.

Maybe Christmas with Kyle's folks wouldn't be so bad after all.

This conclusion was reinforced when he stepped into the kitchen, which was still painted a really fugly, regrettable shade of pea-green. It smelled like baking, just like it had the last time Reilly was here.

Good. Something in the world had the decency to stay constant.

A woman who'd been bent over the stove at the far end of the room stood up and squinted at him. "Beau, is that you?"

Kyle had always complained about his mom refusing to get glasses. Reilly smiled, ignoring that she'd called him by (a shortened form of) his first name. Those cookies better be worth it. "Yes, ma'am."

"Haven't seen you in years. Kyle hasn't been misbehaving? Hate to see a good boy like you get led astray." She hugged him briefly. "Now. Beauregard. I understand you wanted some of my recipes?"

He winced. "Yes, ma'am. Specifically, I want to know how you make those cookies Kyle likes so much. And you can just call me Beau, or Reilly. Everyone calls me Reilly."

"All right, then." She wiped her hands on her apron -- more of an absent gesture than anything, given that her hands looked pretty clean. "Oven's full right now, but I've already got some dough ready. It's the pretzel cookies you want to make, right?" She brushed some loose hair back out of her face with the back of one hand.

"Yes'm. The ones with the sugar on top."

"OK, great." She pinned the loose hair back with a spare hairpin. "I have some copies of the recipe I can send with you, but I'm gonna show you how to make 'em anyway. They can be awful particular."

"OK, ma'am. I'm in your hands." He was glad he hadn't worn a coat, and he rolled up his shirtsleeves. Baking was messy. Maybe he was just a spaz, but at least when he baked, it was messy.

"You can call me Lou if you want," she said abruptly, going past him to the fridge, giving him no time to say 'yes, fine' or 'no, that's weird, you're my fuckbuddy's mom'. "All right, Beau. I already made the dough, but lemme tell you how it's done."

He waited patiently and stepped aside while she hucked a lump of cookie dough wrapped in wax paper off the top shelf of the fridge. "What you need is a pound of butter, ten tablespoons of sour cream, and a pound of flour."

She thumped the lump of dough down on a counter, and he moved over to stand awkwardly near her.

"How much is a pound of flour -- Lou?" Was there anywhere he could bake these at the School? Fuck it. If there wasn't, he'd find a way to bake them anyway.

There was a canister of flour on the counter, and she grabbed a handful out of it, sprinkled it on the counter, spread it around a little with her hands.

"'Bout four cups." She opened a drawer under the counter and retrieved a rolling pin and cover. "Y' put the flour and the butter together in a big bowl, and you mix those up with your hands. Although my sister likes to use a mixer, go figure."

He didn't have a mixer. He _did_ have decent upper-body strength. "Tastes the same either way?"

She grinned at him and stripped the wax paper off the dough. "Near as I can tell. Anyway, you mix those up and then you add all your sour cream and you mix that in, too, got it? Then you chuck the whole mess in a cool place for a few hours."

Which meant, at the School, the fridge. It wasn't going to be _too_ hard to bake these for Kyle. "All right."

"Grab an egg out of the fridge, would you?" she said, and started rolling the dough out on the counter.

He opened the fridge and got one. He hated not knowing his way around a kitchen.

"Bowls are in that cabinet behind you. Crack the egg and get the yolk into one."

He turned and grabbed one down, cracked the egg on the countertop, stood over the sink and reduced it to a yolk perched in a broken shell half. God, he loved baking. He poured the yolk into the bowl, put the bowl on the counter next to where Lou was rolling out the dough.

"All right." She nodded at the dough. "So after you have all your dough and it's been in the fridge a few hours, you cut it into thirds. And you take one of those pieces and you roll it out thin, like an eighth of an inch. Which is what I'm doing here."

She paused for a moment before spinning the dough to roll it in a different direction, squinting at its thickness. "This looks about right. See how thin that is?"

Reilly took a good hard look at the dough. Well, he wasn't blind or anything. "Yep."

"Get the egg and put it on the dough. You want to spread it out, or d'you not want to get your hands dirty?" She grinned at him as he stood frozen with the bowl in his hands. _Definitely_ Kyle's mom. Reilly wished he could've grown up in her house.

"I'll do it." He tipped the yolk out on the rolled-out dough, squished it under his fingers, carefully starting spreading it out.

"Get it all over the dough. All the corners."

It was like finger-painting, he found. Except with raw egg, so not much like finger-painting at all.

"Mmkay," she said, watching. "Looks good. Now you need to sprinkle sugar over it, same way as the egg." She took the scoop from the sugar container and dumped sugar on the dough. He spread it out.

_Cooking is chemistry_. Well, so he could see how that was true, but chemistry didn't end nearly as deliciously. And you could mess up more in cooking.

"Beau." She caught his attention, and he glanced up at her. She nodded at the sink to his left. "Go wash your hands."

When he came back, hands cold from the water, she was holding a knife -- she watched him for a moment, then handed it to him. "Now cut the dough into strips, all right?"

"'Bout how wide?"

"Third of an inch." She turned away, left him to his own devices to cut the first strip from top to bottom. He made a guess at how much a third of an inch was.

She turned back to him holding a cookie sheet, set it down on the counter next to him.

"Right, you have a strip cut?" She lifted it from the counter and onto the cookie sheet. "This's an ungreased cookie sheet. Remember that. But now you wanna make a pretzel shape."

"Lou," he said with the same tone he used at the School when someone was refusing to make sense, "show me how."

"That's what I'm doing. Watch my hands."

You couldn't make it any simpler: she made a pretzel shape with the dough. He stared, hoping he could imitate that. Reilly had always kind of sucked at imitating things like that.

"You got that, Beau? My other tray of cookies is done. Make me some more like that and I'll be back in a minute." She vanished.

He did his best to mimic what she'd done. Cut a strip. Transfer to cookie sheet. Make a pretzel shape. Cut a strip.

Well, it was a damn sight less boring than paperwork back at the School. And more normal.

He listened to Lou transferring the other cookies to what he guessed was a cooling rack on some other counter somewhere.

Yeah, the School was great and all that. Good pay. Nice coworkers. (Stupid sexy Jeb.) Interesting work.

It just couldn't compare to some other things in life, though. Like baking cookies with your best friend's mom. Maybe that was a little bit weird, but dammit, it was fun for Reilly.

Sure, it was... enjoyable working with werewolves and dreaming about analyzing angels.

But there was definitely something to be said for more down-to-earth pursuits. Christmas, for one thing.

He grinned to himself, called, "Hey -- Lou? Tray's full."

"Great." She came over with the tray she'd just emptied, exchanged it for the one now full of mildly-misshapen pretzel shapes. "You did a good job. Keep it up."

"Thanks."

"I never got to teach Kyle how to bake these," she mused. "I guess you're my best chance to pass the recipe on." Metallic clanging as she slid the tray into the oven. "This is 350 degrees. Bake 'em about ten or twelve minutes. When they're done they'll be kinda sizzling, maybe bubbling a little. Don't touch that tray yet, it's still hot."

She came over and moved the tray over a little, kept talking as she did so. "Pretzel cookies are fine right out of the oven, but they're kinda crumbly. Let 'em age a while. They only get better."

"Thanks for teaching me how to make these," Reilly said, wiping his hands off on his jeans, even though they were pretty clean. "I... wanna make them for Kyle's birthday."

"High-five," she commanded, and he complied, rather shocked. _Kyle, your mom is so cool_. "Beau, you're the best friend my son ever had."

"Thanks... uh, Lou."

She grinned. "It's God's truth. I consider you part of the family, whether or not you're blood kin to us."

It might be creepy, but Reilly hugged her anyway. "Thank you."

She took the knife out of his hand, started cutting more strips for pretzel cookies. "Family's part of Christmas, Beau. You're part of ours. I'm glad Kyle finally brought you."

Reilly started making more pretzel shapes.

He was coming to a conclusion here.

Best. Christmas. Ever.

* * *

"Why is it cold?"

Ter Borcht hugged the borrowed jacket closer around himself. It didn't quite fit, but it came close enough.

"It's December." He looked up from his book, a faint smile curling his lips -- as if ter Borcht needed any reminders of why Jeb was beautiful. "Despite what a lot of people think, we do have seasons here."

"I know that. It just shouldn't be this cold." _Think warm thoughts. _At least it wasn't snowing. There was that. And he had Jeb's jacket, so it wasn't _that_ bad.

"Well, just hang on a minute." The microwave beeped, and Jeb opened the door to retrieve two cups of hot chocolate. "Sure you don't want any marshmallows?"

"I'm sure." He wrapped his hands around the mug -- rather than flimsy disposable cups, Jeb had dug around until he came up with two mismatched actual mugs, insisting that they needed something better than Styrofoam or paper, especially on Christmas Eve.

He was so damn _sweet_ like that -- not in the ways you'd expect, but in his own small, quirky, infinitely more endearing way. He'd never stand under anyone's window holding a boombox, but mention being cold and he'd go digging through cabinets on a quest to find you a mug so he could make you hot chocolate. And he'd loan you a jacket while he was at it.

Ter Borcht moved over a little on the couch so that Jeb could sit down beside him without spilling hot chocolate everywhere, then moved back over so that he could rest his head on Jeb's shoulder. He might be bony, but the man made a good pillow. "Thanks."

"For the hot chocolate? For you, it's no problem." He was trying so hard to be smooth that it just wrapped around into plain, well, cute. Or maybe he'd actually managed suave for once in his life.

Ter Borcht didn't mind either way -- he liked Jeb fine, whether he was smoother than James Bond or dorkier than Reilly on a bad day. "Thanks for the jacket, too," he added.

Jeb put his arm around ter Borcht's shoulders, hugging him close. "I didn't want you to be cold." (He didn't like seeing ter Borcht uncomfortable -- he liked being able to take care of him, make sure he was feeling all right. From one point of view, you could say that was Jeb being a typical father-to-be -- protective of the... person carrying his child. From another point of view, you could say that was just Jeb being _Jeb_. He was protective of the people he loved, dammit.)

"Thanks," ter Borcht muttered, feeling a blush color his cheeks. Oh, goddammit, hormones. He sipped his hot chocolate -- for all that it came freeze-dried (or whatever they did to it to make it shelf-stable) out of a packet, it wasn't that bad. He attributed that to the fact that Jeb had made it for him.

They were silent. (Jeb thought, for a moment, of his book, abandoned on the counter -- and then dismissed the thought. Fuck the book. He had Roland right here.)

In a more perfect world, they'd have been left alone for a good long while.

However, as evidenced by the presence of STDs, racism, and never being able to find the mate to the sock you're already wearing, it was not a perfect world.

Said imperfect world, though, did grant them a few moments of quiet before giving in and allowing someone to come in search of Jeb.

Luckily for the two of them, it was Doctor Prescott's unflappable secretary Melanie, unperturbed by anything short of a nuclear bomb, and therefore unbothered by seeing Doctor Batchelder curled up on the employee lounge sofa with Doctor ter Borcht and a mug of hot chocolate.

"Can you spare a moment, Dr. Batchelder? Phone call."

Jeb didn't bother to get up. "Who's it from?" If it was from anyone short of someone who could fire him or someone in the government, he was going to tell them to fuck off. It was Christmas Eve and he was spending it with his lover, who happened to be seven months pregnant with his daughter. Any request short of one to save the world could go fuck itself.

"According to her, Mrs. Judith ter Borcht."

Ter Borcht opened his eyes and sat up straight (well, as straight as was possible given how the sofa tended to suck people in). "That call's for me."

"I thought it might be." She made the tired attempt at a smile of a woman who really expected to be off work an hour ago. "I'll redirect her to this extension."

She disappeared, and after a moment the phone rang.

Ter Borcht answered it, silently blessing whoever had moved the employee lounge phone to a low table next to the sofa. He did _not_ want to get up. The sofa was too damn comfortable for that. "Hi, Mom."

(Next to him, Jeb smiled and put his arm back around Roland. He was pretty sure that there wasn't going to be an argument. He just had a good feeling about it. And besides, it was Christmas Eve here, maybe already early Christmas morning in Germany -- or however the timezone thing worked. You didn't call your son on Christmas Eve to start an argument with him.)

"Finally! I was getting worried that I wouldn't be able to talk to you." Well, she didn't _sound_ angry.

"I was going to call you. Did Minna give you the number?"

She laughed -- one way Minna was definitely her mother's daughter. They had the same laugh. "No. Your friend Marian did."

He cringed. "Oh. Did she?"

"Yes. I understand you're finally giving me a grandchild?"

Ter Borcht couldn't think of anything to say for a moment. How much had Marian _told_ her? "Um... yes..." Oh God, that sounded so _stupid_.

"Your sister never did settle down. I'm glad _one_ of you is making me a grandmother." She sighed. "Well, I just wanted to call and congratulate you. I don't want to keep you from... whatever you're doing." As opposed to Minna, who seemed to have been aiming, up until the end, to keep him on the phone as long as she possibly could. "And Roland?"

"Yes?"

"Do you know if it's a boy or a girl yet?" He'd had stranger conversations, yes. Not many, though.

"Girl."

"Come visit me as soon as you can, all right? I want to see her." She sounded so... normal. "Take care of yourself. I won't keep you any longer. Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas, Mom," he muttered, and hung up.

"Well?" Jeb asked. "How'd it go?"

"Better than I expected," he said honestly. "She sounds... happy for us. And she wants me, at least, to come visit after the baby is born." (It entirely slipped his mind, at that moment in time, to worry that that would be impossible due to him being dead.)

Jeb grinned. "I... can arrange that. So she wasn't... angry?"

"No." Jeb had already set his mug down on the table on his side of the couch, and ter Borcht absently put his mug down next to the phone so that he could lean up against Jeb more comfortably. "She acted like it was completely normal."

"I like your family," Jeb said reflectively, and drew Roland closer to him. "Your sister's a riot, and your mother seems to be a remarkable lady."

"You haven't even_ met_ them yet," ter Borcht reminded him.

"I'll have to."

They'd love him, ter Borcht realized. He was smart, had a steady job -- well, he was a _man_, and it might be a while before ter Borcht's mother was fully adjusted to that, but he was everything a mother would want in a son-in-law. His German was pretty terrible, but her English was better...

"Hey -- Roland?"

He broke off his train of thought. "What?"

"If we're going to meet your mom at some point, you're going to have to help me out with my German," he said, half-teasing.

"I'll be glad to."

"I know you will." He laughed and whispered in ter Borcht's ear.

"Besides. I think it's hot when you speak German."

For a relationship that had gotten started under the mistletoe a decade and a half before... their first Christmas Eve together was, all told, pretty awesome.

Jeb made _damn_ good hot chocolate, after all.


End file.
